Page 3 of Salvation
It took everything he had to keep his eyes level with Soren’s instead of dropping to the ground. He had to be honest and admit what had happened between him and Sarah a year ago. A night when he’d been overcome by some crazy impulse and betrayed his cousin by sleeping with his mate.
Soren took a deep breath exactly when Todd did, and they both sent the same thought to each other at exactly the same time.
We have to talk, man. We have to talk.
Todd stared at his cousin. He knew what secret he had to tell Soren. But what on earth did Soren have to tell him?
Chapter One
Sarah wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be.
Anna stood at the edge of her cousin’s property and kicked at the ashes blackening the ground. The house was nothing but a charred frame, partially caved in. Not a breath of life, not a sign of movement but for a strip of faded police tape that fluttered in the breeze.
It had been three weeks since the fire, and everyone had given up on Sarah. But not Anna.
Her cousin wasn’t dead. She knew it. She could feel it in her bones.
She’d given up trying to explain. She just knew, although she couldn’t get anyone else to believe her. A feeling deep inside her soul was not exactly the kind of evidence the local police were looking for — if they were looking for evidence at all. They’d rushed through their investigation of a deadly arson series, more concerned with burying the bizarre events in the past than searching for the truth. Every time Anna suggested they follow up on a clue, they shook their heads.
Listen, honey. Your cousin was a nice girl. It’s a terrible tragedy. But you have to accept the truth. She’s gone. The others, too.
Anna kicked at a lump of ash then paced the edge of the property. Her aunt and uncle were gone. She’d shed plenty of tears over that awful fact. But her cousin wasn’t dead.
Honey, we pulled three bodies from the house. Three.
She’d tried explaining that the third must have been Ginger, a relative from the other side of Sarah’s family who’d been visiting at the time of the fire. But the authorities weren’t interested in anything but a nice, quick wrap-up to the case.
The people of Black River need to heal. We need to move on.
That much, she got. The town was still reeling from the brutal attacks on three remote homesteads in the area. The Boone place had been burned to the ground along with the Voss lumber mill, located way out past the west end of town, as well as another cluster of houses at the edge of the woods to the south where the Macks family had lived for generations. The authorities still weren’t sure how many people had died, and locals were so spooked, they only brought the subject up in whispers.
Anna didn’t want to whisper. She wanted to scream. She’d driven out from Virginia the day she heard the news and had practically shouted at the state trooper who insisted her cousin was dead.
Sarah wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be.
She and Sarah had been as close as twins when they were kids, although as far as looks went, all they had in common was the green color of their eyes. Her cousin was a redhead, while her own hair was raven-black, but still, they liked to pretend they were twins. Even after Anna moved to the East Coast in third grade, they had remained close. Almost telepathically close, because she would phone Sarah exactly when Sarah was about to call her, already knowing whether her mood was up or down. They finished each other’s sentences and liked the same things — like dogs and horses and autumn leaves. Every summer as a kid, Anna visited Montana and slept in the top bunk in Sarah’s room, and they would stay up half the night chatting away. About everything, like hopes and dreams and somedays that seemed so bright, so full of possibility. They’d vowed to hike the tallest peaks together. To tame wild horses. To open a wildlife rescue center someday.
When Anna’s parents had announced they were leaving Montana for Virginia all those years ago, her world had come to a crashing halt. When her father passed away soon after of cancer, and her mother up and found a new man, it felt the same way. But now, she really knew what a crashing halt felt like.
It was this sick-in-the-stomach feeling that overwhelmed her every time she stopped at the charred hulk that used to be her home away from home. She’d always vowed she’d move back to Montana someday — but Jesus, not like this. Not like this.
Honey, you need to move on, too. Go home to Virginia.
Home wasn’t Virginia. Home was the sleepy town of Black River, Montana. And she sure as hell wasn’t leaving until she uncovered the truth. She’d taken an indefinite leave of absence from her job on the East Coast to find her cousin. Somehow.
There were no survivors, honey. Not unless you count that bear.
Bear? What bear?She’d just about taken the detective by the shoulders and shaken him. Was he mocking her? Making a bad joke?
That grizzly we found half-dead on the lawn of the Boone place. Damnedest thing.
She rushed to the wildlife rescue center the second the police officer mentioned it, even though he shook his head hopelessly.
That grizzly’s probably dead by now. No way can an animal survive wounds that bad.
But the bear had clung to life, as she discovered when she arrived at the rescue center. She knew the place since she and Sarah had volunteered there every summer. That was probably the only reason they’d let her in when she turned up after hours, asking about the bear.
“The poor thing,” the rescue center director, Cynthia, told her. “He’s been badly burned and severely wounded by wolves that mobbed him that very same night.”
